World Football Postulant

With so much movement over the offseason, it’s a bit difficult to pick the first week’s worth of matches.  Both Ajax and PSV get matches they’ll be expected to win, while AZ and NAC Breda may be the most evenly-matched pairing of the weekend.

Here are my first week picks: Continue Reading »

Aside from the top six teams in the league, I was not very familiar with the Eredivisie before going the research for these predictions.  As was the case when I forecasted the Bungesliga and the Portuguese Liga, I am somewhat ignorant of Dutch football.  That, however, will not stop me from trying to become a real follower, with this being my first stab.  To the right, you will see my prognostications for the upcoming season, which starts this weekend.

For these predictions, I used the same method I used for all my other previews.  I looked at every position on every team and asked how that player will effect the team’s goals for and goal against.  Once I had that, I was able to project a goals for, goal against ratio, with which I was able to simulate a double-round robin season.  I wrote a script to do this simulation and have used it for every prediction save Ligue 1’s.  For the Eredivisie, I ran the script 10,000 times to minimize the effect of any statistical noise.

And if that doesn’t make football sound boring, nothing will.

When you watch Eredivisie football, the thing which stands out is the wide-out play.  There are more teams playing three forwards in the Dutch league than anywhere else.  In addition, teams play very wide, attacking football.  This leads to a ton of goals.  The league had one team, Ajax, almost break 100 goals last season.  It is an athlete’s league, a scorer’s league, and almost the mirror image of football in Portugal.  You can see why so many players in this league make an easy transition to the Bundesliga.

Ajax added Marco van Basten and retained almost all of their key players.  They are in a great position to unseat four-time champion PSV Eindhoven, who lost Jefferson Farfan in addition to their starting goaltender, Huerelho Gomes.  PSV only finished three points ahead of Ajax last season and had a worse goal differential.  Having retained leading scorer and new captain Klass-Jan Huntelaar, added van Basten and Miralem Sulejmani (who scored 15 goals for Heerenveen last season).  This is the season where PSV - the Porto, Bayern, Lyon of the Eredivisie - slip to an Ajax side partly motivated by missing out on the Champions League thanks to the now discarded post-season playoffs.  As you can see to the right, I don’t think it will be particularly close.

That playoff format, used also in the Dutch second division (Eerste Divisie), is why a team that finished sixth amongst those vying for promotion finds itself in the Eredivisie.  ADO Den Haag won the promotion playoffs and like, FC Twente (who won the Eredivisie playoff to qualify for Champions League qualifying) looked out of their element against Arsenal, ADO Den Haag will look out of their element in the Eredivisie.

In between top and bottom, the team that has done the most to improve itself is AZ, a team that struggled (relatively) to score goals last season but brought in a series of scorers to help move them back into a UEFA Cup qualifying spot.  They should, at least, be competitive.

The one big surprise I have, after I ran the numbers, is Heerenveen.  In my simulations, there were basically as good as PSV.  I thought, in losing one of their three best goal scorers, they would take a step back from their fifth place finish, but as I looked closer a.) their fifth place finish seemed to understate their performance, and b.) other teams were regressing more than them.

But the story of this Eredivisie season will be at the top, where the league’s two storied clubs will against fight it out for the title.  I have Ajax finally breaking through, but as I mentioned at the onset of this post, what do I know?